Behind the scenes lighting shot wins Event Photography Awards

The 11th annual Event Photography Awards saw photographer Luke Dyson take home the top prize for his stunning backstage shot of a lighting engineer.

The competition was founded to highlight the importance of great photography to the sustenance of the events industry by Philip Atkins, CEO of staffing agency Off To Work. It attracted more than 2,300 images of events held all around the world from photographers in over 30 countries.

This year's awards culminated in an event at 66 Portland Place, the home of RIBA, just a few days before the venue closes for a multi-million-pound renovation. Some 250 guests enjoyed catering by Blue Strawberry while perusing an extensive gallery of more than 130 short-listed shots printed by Visions Group, who also oversaw event production.

Luke Dyson was the Overall Winner

Dyson's stylish ‘Behind the Scenes’ category winner proved popular with both the many industry leading judges on the panel, as well as trade and photography magazine editors. Entitled ‘Singularity’, the image shows a lighting engineer for Barcelona-based event managers, Vision Factory, testing the visual displays for the MDLBEAST Soundstorm festival in Riyadh late into the night before the opening day, thereby highlighting the commitment, attention to detail and technological investment required to successfully produce impactful events.

The much-admired and emotionally provocative Overall Runner-Up shot came from the increasingly important Brand Activation & Experiential Events category.

Captured closer to home at Westfield White City London by David Parry for the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), where the suicide prevention charity unveiled its Missed Birthdays installation made up of 6,929 ‘balloons of hope’, representing a real young life lost to suicide in the past decade. Although the colourful yet moving image missed out on the top award, it did win the Peoples’ Choice Award which is voted for by guests attending the awards event.

The two Overall Highly Commended images showed great moments at contrasting music events. Victor Frankowski’s image has an exuberant Fatboy Slim leading the dancing at his annual pool party during the All Back to Minehead Festival...

...while Dutch photographer, Martin Hols, captured huge flames erupting from towering structures at the Defqon.1 Festival in The Netherlands, casting a deep orange glow over the massive crowd.

The coveted Best Portfolio award was won by Andrew Billington, who was recognised after being runner-up in no less than three of the 18 core categories, as well as winning the Christmas Parties & Seasonal Events class with a fun shot of a camel.

Bethlehem Bypass - Andrew Billington

For the second year running Andrew Pountney picked up a Best Amateur trophy...

...while Jack Boskett went one better, by winning the popular Royal Occasions category for the third year in a row.

Competition founder, Philip Atkins, CEO of event staffing agency Off to Work, said: “Photography does so much to amplify, justify and sustain the events industry, which itself is an increasingly important element in marketing budget, let alone economies and society as a whole! It was generally agreed amongst the judges that the competition was the toughest yet to adjudicate, as a plethora of inspiring, amusing and moving images encapsulated the importance and impact events.”

Competition and event director Graham Hill added: “As ever, especially as a not-for-profit exercise, we owe huge debts of gratitude to our sponsors and event partners for making the competition possible and awards event enormously enjoyable. Also, to our array of judges, who had well over 500 photos to review across the 18 core categories.

“The competition continues to go from strength to strength and is becoming increasingly international, so with both quality and quantity in mind, we look forward to EPA 2026 with great anticipation.”

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